Randall
J. Randall Murphy
- Your #1 seems to be covered by my #7 ( Intentionally created misperception )
- Your #2 seems to be covered by my #4, #5, #6 depending on the situation.
-
NEW! LOWEST RATES EVER -- SUPPORT THE SHOW AND ENJOY THE VERY BEST PREMIUM PARACAST EXPERIENCE! Welcome to The Paracast+, eight years young! For a low subscription fee, you can download the ad-free version of The Paracast and the exclusive, member-only, After The Paracast bonus podcast, featuring color commentary, exclusive interviews, the continuation of interviews that began on the main episode of The Paracast. We also offer lifetime memberships! Flash! Take advantage of our lowest rates ever! Act now! It's easier than ever to susbcribe! You can sign up right here!
The UFO Stimulus
- Thread starter Soupie
- Start date
Randall
J. Randall Murphy
I'm not entirely sure I'm following you, but maybe my post above might apply to some degree. The point there being that although there are many causal factors in UFO sighting reports, the ones that are of core interest in ufology are alien craft. That doesn't mean the other factors aren't interesting or applicable. It just means that they're not at the center of the radar ( so to speak ).
Jeff Davis
Paranormal Adept
And this of course is a "slice of the paranormal pie I have developed an apatite for in terms of my own speculative reasoning over the course of the last 20 years or so. I think that with respect to those that have given to the matter their deepest interest, the possibility of discarnate intelligence is not only indicative of most people's speculative views or suspicions at one time or another, it's a natural one to latch onto due in most part to socially indoctrinated centric programming . I don't think a "non-biological" status, or discarnate life form has to necessarily be in play however.
If extremely advanced biological beings developed a paradigm in which enveloped artificial consciousness was used to sustain a bubble or near field wherein their technological means of travel (UFOs) were effectively controlled via artificial cognoids, the field around this technology could in fact disrupt the synch of our own native cognitive/consciousness enough, or to the effect, that high strangeness was the result.
If experiential reality is the native product of our cognition's situated and synchronized relationship within the host realm of consciousness, artificial consciousness could be used as a sort of omni interface wherein one's cognitive determiners are synthetically adjusted or tuned to adapt to whichever immediate cognitive environment this unified field of consciousness is hosting. In this sense the many worlds postulations would translate to the many native cognitive experiential states of existent awareness (reality) as determined within the singular uniformity of consciousness, or infinity. As Keel stated, there may be areas that naturally host a far greater efficiency with respect to transitioning from one reality to another. This may be what we observe as some UFOs.
No one seems to "get" (or maybe it's just that no one wants to get) this whole "environment of consciousness" thing that I've been touting for the last 10 years or so, but in terms of speculation it's relatively common sense and does in fact account for nearly every aspect of Fortean high strangeness events and experiences that are reported.
We ourselves at this time right now are not that far away from AI. There are countless demonstrations of nonlocal awareness or cognition. If one dismisses any and all confirmation bias, with respect to a speculation derived natural progressive order of advancement, it's kinda 2+2. IMO, this is the type of understanding that resources such as AI will afford a technology relevant working understanding of.
Last edited:
Sand
Paranormal Adept
I see it differently. I see the base question in ufology as, are there UFOs resulting from an anomalous phenomenon, a phenomenon that resides outside the orthodox worldview. I see the questions of whether they are extraterrestrial in origin, and whether anomalous UFOs are necessarily “craft" as two additional significant questions.
“Craft” I take to mean a vehicle, a device used for transportation. I would say the object Col Halt and his team sighted in the Rendlesham woods is at the core of ufology. Do you view the blinking red oval that dripped blobs of light and broke into five white objects as a craft? Or even a drone that was spying on the Woodbridge base? Do you think of the 1975 orb that spent the night maneuvering over the mountainside outside your girlfriend’s house as a vehicle that was in the course of transporting beings? Maybe I’m misunderstanding your use of the term “craft”.
Randall
J. Randall Murphy
The "base question" you speak of and the "core subject matter" I speak of seem to be two separate ideas, and if so, both can be equally valid in terms of their own context:
When I speak of core subject mater in the context of ufology, it's in keeping with the creation and usage of the word "UFO" in modern language. The overwhelming majority of historical info and usage, when distilled down, results in the word "UFO" meaning "alien craft". To be clear here, meaning ( interpretation) is not the same as word origin, which comes from the phrase "Unidentified Flying Object, and the interpretation of the meaning is not to be misconstrued as claiming anyone has verifiable scientifically valid material evidence that alien craft exist, or that there aren't other things that are responsible for UFO reports. It just means that rather than asking, "Are there UFOs resulting from an anomalous phenomenon?" I'd ask, "Are some UFO reports the result of anomalous phenomena?"
The difference is subtle but important because in the context of ufology, the first question asks if alien craft result from anomalous phenomena, while the second doesn't imply an explanation for the report. Both are legitimate questions, and both are also quite different in context. There are probably some who don't see the need to discern the difference, however that lack of discernment has led to a lot of confusion about the subject matter. For example, the title of this thread, "The UFO stimulus" could be taken loosely to mean, the stimulus leading to UFO reports, or literally as the stimulus emanating from alien craft. Both are legitimate interpretations, but which do we mean? One or the other or both? I assumed based on what seemed to be the context that what was meant was the stimulus leading to UFO reports.
I don't think you're misinterpreting the word craft as much as how I look at cases. I would ask if the objects were alien craft as opposed to some anomalous natural phenomena or other kind of thing we're not familiar with. It might even be alien and not be a craft, in which case it wouldn't be a UFO, but something else, whatever else that might be. For example, if it was some sort of projection rather than a craft, then it wouldn't be a UFO, just like a projection of an airplane isn't an airplane.
A craft doesn't necessarily have to transport beings. It just needs to be a transport of some fashion. An aerial drone is a type or craft. I think the UFO I saw was some sort of probe, which is a type of craft. It gets a bit hazy when we start talking about craft as living things in and of themselves, but the line IMO is where such craft represent technology. For example, Kosh's craft in the sci-fi series Babylon 5 was said to be alive, but it was still a craft because it was based on Vorlon technology. I believe they are also referred to as ships in the saga.
Last edited:
Randall
J. Randall Murphy
I like the way you think
Randall
J. Randall Murphy
If I'm understanding you correctly, you're considering some really exotic possibilities, but still within a rational framework. It seems a bit fuzzy around the edges to me, but the line of thinking is very interesting and seems similar to something I posed in a thread some time ago. Notwithstanding FTL technology, traversing interstellar distances for biological beings is very problematic. To solve these problems I proposed a sort of digital suspended animation, where rather than preserving physical bodies, consciousness would be downloaded into AI modules that interface with the craft's system.
If such an AI system is a possibility, then beings could conceivably transport themselves physically across vast distances with very little concern for time or biological constraints. Upon reaching a suitable host world, they could then set about exploring how to reverse download their consciousness back into biological creatures, like perhaps clones made from genetic material also stored on their journey, or possibly even from host species on the new world. The latter would facilitate compatibility with the host planet's ecosystem and natural habitat, and that might explain some of the curious biological studies that go along with some stories of alien encounters.
This seems to be along the same lines as your thinking, but not quite the same. All very interesting to contemplate though
Last edited:
Sand
Paranormal Adept
I think I see the disconnect. I don’t think of “UFO” as being synonymous with “alien craft”. I think in terms of a UFO being something witnessed in the air that appears unconventional and remains unidentified after thorough examination, a UAP.
If the red oval witnessed by Col Halt in the woods was in fact nothing we would consider a craft, a controlled ball of plasma for an example, I would still refer to it as a UFO. Being unidentified and unconventional that determine it. I see that you would not consider it a UFO.
Randall
J. Randall Murphy
Yes. You have correctly identified the difference in context, and without any big ego charged debate. Wonderful! Now we're able to communicate and know what each other is talking about. How cool is that for a change
! It's almost hard to describe how refreshing that is ( and that's not to suggest anything about you personally ). I've just been through this glitch so many times and nearly always somebody gets up in arms about it rather than just nailing down the communication issue and moving along.I also use the term UAP ( Unidentified Aerial Phenomena ) for cases that are too ambiguous to class as UFOs. However I completely disagree with NARCAP that UFOs are a sub-group of "unidentified phenomena". They have the logic all wrong there. It's like saying that a mystery airplane is an unidentified aircraft phenomenon. That's ridiculous. A mystery airplane is still an airplane and an alien craft is still an alien craft rather than an "unidentified phenomena". Like Vallée said, to paraphrase: "I cannot think of anything more treacherous that the word 'unidentified'."
Certainly there are other "phenomena" out there besides UFOs, but with respect to ufology, UFOs are the core subject matter ( obviously ). UAPs are not. Strange birds or optical illusions or deceptions or whatever else the case may be are of interest only to the extent that they can be filtered out from reports that strongly suggest alien craft. After that, if the report seems to fit something else, like a bizarrely large bird, the context for that is cryptozoological rather than ufological. So maybe the thread would have been more accurately titled: The UAP Stimulus, or even more precisely, The Stimuli Perceived By Witnesses In UAP Reports.
Last edited:
victimized
Skilled Investigator
Males seem to be missing their ability to think about our living conditions.
Human beings know that we live as a human being, have sex as a human being, live and die. If we did not have sex, all human life would desist to exist.
Only animals would be living as the organic life form on Earth in the Nature.
We therefore know that we are an organic life form who eats, drinks, sleeps, procreates and continues to live. The lifestyle an introduced human concept that was enforced upon the natural living conditions, as Native spiritual lives demonstrate.
We live on a Planet that by status of evolution supported our mind/brain conditions and also our physical health.
Occult science, an introduced human concept that involved buildings to perform the conversion of the natural evolution then began to destroy the natural living conditions on Earth.
It has happened before by past life historical evidence, stories, experiences and it is happening again.
The only reason why the argument continues about the UFO condition is because the occultist who are always looking for new technology, new powers, new resources for the values that they imposed upon our lives....money and trade, do not understand the artificial condition that they now want to personally own, control in machines.
This is the only reason for the amount of theories, studies and arguments on forums regarding the information because the occultist wants to now own the powers.
Yet the conditions of the sciences demonstrate, and have previously demonstrated that the applied practices of occult conversions destroys and attacks the natural life, just as is happening.
When you review the theories of the occultists first of all they want us to believe that an organism from out of space created all life. The amount of theories that they have proposed trying to own the UFO powers is ludicrous.
Science is unnatural to the living experience of Nature on a Planet that evolved by itself without a human interfering with its natural status....the only reason why human kind has been eradicated before, for playing around with powers that you do not personally own.
Human beings know that we live as a human being, have sex as a human being, live and die. If we did not have sex, all human life would desist to exist.
Only animals would be living as the organic life form on Earth in the Nature.
We therefore know that we are an organic life form who eats, drinks, sleeps, procreates and continues to live. The lifestyle an introduced human concept that was enforced upon the natural living conditions, as Native spiritual lives demonstrate.
We live on a Planet that by status of evolution supported our mind/brain conditions and also our physical health.
Occult science, an introduced human concept that involved buildings to perform the conversion of the natural evolution then began to destroy the natural living conditions on Earth.
It has happened before by past life historical evidence, stories, experiences and it is happening again.
The only reason why the argument continues about the UFO condition is because the occultist who are always looking for new technology, new powers, new resources for the values that they imposed upon our lives....money and trade, do not understand the artificial condition that they now want to personally own, control in machines.
This is the only reason for the amount of theories, studies and arguments on forums regarding the information because the occultist wants to now own the powers.
Yet the conditions of the sciences demonstrate, and have previously demonstrated that the applied practices of occult conversions destroys and attacks the natural life, just as is happening.
When you review the theories of the occultists first of all they want us to believe that an organism from out of space created all life. The amount of theories that they have proposed trying to own the UFO powers is ludicrous.
Science is unnatural to the living experience of Nature on a Planet that evolved by itself without a human interfering with its natural status....the only reason why human kind has been eradicated before, for playing around with powers that you do not personally own.
Jeff Davis
Paranormal Adept
1.)If I'm understanding you correctly, you're considering some really exotic possibilities, but still within a rational framework. It seems a bit fuzzy around the edges to me, but the line of thinking is very interesting and seems similar to something I posed in a thread some time ago. Notwithstanding FTL technology, traversing interstellar distances for biological beings is very problematic. To solve these problems I proposed a sort of digital suspended animation, where rather than preserving physical bodies, consciousness would be downloaded into AI modules that interface with the craft's system.
If such an AI system is a possibility, then beings could conceivably transport themselves physically across vast distances with very little concern for time or biological constraints. Upon reaching a suitable host world, they could then set about exploring how to reverse download their consciousness back into biological creatures, like perhaps clones made from genetic material also stored on their journey, or possibly even from host species on the new world. The latter would facilitate compatibility with the host planet's ecosystem and natural habitat, and that might explain some of the curious biological studies that go along with some stories of alien encounters.
This seems to be along the same lines as your thinking, but not quite the same. All very interesting to contemplate though
The scenario you forward is a fascinating concept to think about.
The whole idea of transitioning native realities is actually gaining a good deal of traction in speculative consciousness theorems. Certainly not from a known technological stance, but rather as a matter of cognitive science's progress in the realm of theoretical consciousness studies. Personally, all of my own thoughts on the matter of consciousness in conjunction with Fortean Phenomena are self born speculation based ideas in concept. (very bad science!
) However if it weren't for my deep level of interest in FP, and the immense amount of motivation that I feel for it due to my desire to understand our relationship to these phenomena, I most likely would have never given QM or Consciousness studies much directed thought whatsoever. Now I understand that macro level QM principles with respect to our perception based reflections are literally everywhere. Initially within this journey, I was impressed falsely that principles like superposition and entanglement were too complex for me to even begin to fathom, or to truly represent in and of myself. I found out however, that this is an illusion brought about by what is a factually scientific numeric representation of QM principles put forth so that the scientific community itself, can at will, attempt to falsify these equations as science typically does in an effort to best understand them on a uniform and factually level basis. I accomplished this far more so prosaic understanding by eagerly reaching out to parallels in modern scientific research that are seemingly most common in theoretical consciousness studies. I believe one of the most direct and applicable cases for what I hope will open a far clearer visage to realms host to all myriad of the paranormal is what are studies that lend themselves to the interface theory of perception with respect to consciousness. At this time, the speculative evidence presented in this theory seems to best parallel my basic suspicions with respect to what is our native cognitive relationship to and with consciousness. I have been recently studying one particular individual's efforts with great interest. To state that this man's work is fascinating would be akin to calling King Kong a monkey as far as I'm concerned. His name is Donald D. Hoffman | University of California, IrvineIt's absolutely critical to state respectfully that this is NOT being posted out of context nor "off topic" here. Rather it represents a theoretical frame work for the manner in which I believe some UFO stimulus may in fact intersect with our experiential awareness, resulting in some cases which come to represent reported high strangeness. There also could very well be natural causes minus any volition whatsoever, for certain subtle antagonistic disturbances in our experiential awareness. These cognitive disturbances may result in all manner of high strangeness, but I must state that circumstantial evidence does seem to clearly point in a differing direction. I simply maintain that we are as yet unfamiliar with all of our own native environment's potential and the manner in which we are in constant relationship with these consciousness relevant esoteric subtleties.
The following two examples are two excellent jumping off points, and I must say that this man's presentations are positively stunning.
Randall
J. Randall Murphy
Thanks. There are seriously big problems with the idea of AI modules, but parts of it seem plausible. On Hoffman, I 've seen those and other videos, and his main idea is a mathematical modeling of conscious agents, which seem to have potential in the event that we invent high-level AIs that can be networked. I suspect that such networking would do more for them than us, but it's something to ponder. The main challenge with respect to consciousness is figuring out how it comes into being in the first place. Most people figure it has to do with the workings of the brain, a sort of emergent phenomena, which I tend to agree with, but as Chalmers points out, it's also not quite that simple.
Last edited:
An extract from a presentation by an astrophysicist to a fascinating interdisiplinary Edge symposium held in 2007 concerning the origin and nature of life, which is so filled with scientific facts, hypotheses, and theories that I recommend reading all of it for a sense of where -- and how and what -- we are.
Dimitar Sasselov—LIFE: WHAT A CONCEPT! | Edge.org
DIMITAR SASSELOV: I will start the same way, by introducing my background. I am a physicist, just like Freeman and Seth, in background, but my expertise is astrophysics, and more particularly planetary astrophysics. So that means I'm here to try to tell you a little bit of what's new in the big picture, and also to warn you that my background basically means that I'm looking for general relationships — for generalities rather than specific answers to the questions that we are discussing here today.
So, for example, I am personally more interested in the question of the origins of life, rather than the origin of life. What I mean by that is I'm trying to understand what we could learn about pathways to life, or pathways to the complex chemistry that we recognize as life. As opposed to narrowly answering the question of what is the origin of life on this planet. And that's not to say there is more value in one or the other; it's just the approach that somebody with my background would naturally try to take. And also the approach, which — I would agree to some extent with what was said already — is in need of more research and has some promise.
One of the reasons why I think there are a lot of interesting new things coming from that perspective, that is from the cosmic perspective, or planetary perspective, is because we have a lot more evidence for what is out there in the universe than we did even a few years ago. So to some extent, what I want to tell you here is some of this new evidence and why is it so exciting, in being able to actually inform what we are discussing here.
Basically, in order to explain to you why this is interesting, I want to first of all convince you about three things, which are important to my approach. The first one is that what we are looking for is baryonic in nature. What I mean by that is something of which I don't need to convince you, I believe, but you should bear it in mind because this is a feature of our universe, the one we observe. Baryons are all the particles that make up atoms and all that is around us, including ourselves. But that's not necessarily the most common entity in the universe, as you — I'm sure — know about dark matter and dark energy. I think we have to agree that what we are looking for and would call life is baryonic in nature, and there is good reason to believe that dark matter and dark energy are not capable of that level of complexity in this universe yet — or at all.
The second point which I want to convince you of — or use as my background for what I'll tell you here — is that we should agree that what we are looking for, what we call life, is a complex chemical process. Basically, the ability of those atoms to combine in non-trivial ways. This is actually my point of departure, where I would be looking at life more from the purely thermodynamic aspect, that is from the point of view which Robert here described and H. Morowitz has been very eloquent in defining and actually done some research on. That is, what is the parameter space in which you can have chemistry which is complex enough to lead to a qualitatively new phenomenon, a phenomenon which we don't see in the rest of the universe. That's actually an important point here.
Do we know enough about the universe that we can have sufficiently good feeling about that parameter space? Obviously we don't have detailed knowledge of most of the observable universe, but the last 50 years have been actually a revolution in that field, in the sense of the ability to get diagnostics of very distant objects and a very large number of objects.
The databases in astronomy up until just a few years ago were larger than what biology had. It's only now that biology — and, I guess, telecommunications companies — have exceeded that. But one aspect of these databases is that you very rarely see unusual, unexplained phenomena. Despite what you all would like to write on the front page of your newspapers and magazines, actually there is a lot of very boring amount of data there, which is hundreds of thousands — already millions — of stars, which have exactly the same isotopic and chemical patterns that are predicted by the theory which is well developed and is called 'stellar evolution' (although it has very little to do with evolution as used in biology).
But it is one of those steps that we now understand as the development of our world that is of our universe, of starting with very simple baryonic structure for that matter, which then becomes more and more complex. Stellar evolution is one of those phenomena that did not exist in the first half billion years of the universe. And this is not a hypothesis; we know it. We actually can observe a lot of it, and we know that there were no stars during the epoch of recombination, which is the cosmic microwave background, with all the structure that we see in it. And then there were stars, and then stars started a new process, which did not exist in the universe before, which is the synthesis of the heavy elements. That is — baryons working together as elementary particles and building a structure — the Mendeleev table, which then would lead to chemistry.
VENTER: How many years ago was this?
SASSELOV: 13.7 billion years ago is where we see the precursor of the microwave background radiation, so that's our first very well studied piece of evidence. Then about half a billion later is the time when the first stars can form, from the gas, and they're mostly made of hydrogen and helium. Then they go through a period where over a time of five billion years they produce enough carbon, nitrogen and oxygen and all the heavy elements, where you start effectively producing planets. And then we come to 4.5 billion years, which is the origin of our own solar system and the Earth. And almost within a half billion years, some complex chemistry which we now see covering entirely and co-opting the geophysical cycles of this planet. So that's to give you a quick idea about the time scales.
In that sense life is an integral part of that global development that we see. And although we know only one example of it, it doesn't seem unusual when you think of it that way — as a progression of complexity that the baryonic aspect of this — baryonic matter — in this universe has actually the propensity to lead to. So the question then is what is this good for [in terms of] understanding the origins of life, or possible pathways? And even more generically, could we design experiments in which we can find out whether all these possible baryonic pathways really merge into one — the one that produces life here on Earth — or are there multiple pathways? Even if you could answer that question, that would be very exciting, because it will tell us something about the general rules of complexity that baryonic chemistry can really lead to.
The question then is, the third aspect which I want to convince you of, is we know quite a bit about the universe, but there are only a few places in the universe where you can think of that complex chemistry being capable to survive over a sufficiently long period of time. And vacuum is not one of them, in the sense of surviving in which you were talking about the origin of life; starting with smaller molecules, which then have enough time to lead to more complex ones. And when I think of vacuum, I don't mean the surface of a comet, but really the inter-stellar medium, with its very low density.
I can imagine life that started on some surface then migrating to live in the inter-stellar medium. But I cannot imagine, as an astrophysicist, from what I know, that there is an environment, which is stable enough over the time scales necessary for that chemistry to take place. So I am a little bit biased in that sense to planets and planetary systems as the only environment that we know of today, as far as we know in the universe, which has all of those factors put together — that is, stability over long periods of time, but sufficiently low or moderate temperatures. (Stars are very stable over billions of years, but they all have very high temperatures, all throughout.) And basically the overall thermodynamic window that Morowitz is talking about, which allows complex chemistry. That's actually much broader than simply having water.
When people talk about habitable environments, sometimes they would equate that to the existence of water, or the ability of water to be in a liquid form. That's a much broader view of what is available there. But whatever your idea of what could be habitable is, the bottom line is that there are not that many objects, or places, in the observable universe that allow that. In fact, planetary systems are certainly not only the best, but are probably the only ones on which we are certain that complex chemistry can occur.
Then the question is, how much do we know about planetary systems? Up until 12 years ago, essentially we knew only of one: the solar system. That situation is very similar to what we have with life. We only have one example. And that's bad from many points of view, and we — 'we' meaning astronomers — learned it the hard way, because it turned out that what we had theorized about planets was very solar system-centric, and we missed a lot of things that we should not have missed, but that always happens when you have only one example of something.
What planets allow you to do now that we know how many different types of them there are, is you can have a pretty good estimate of what to look for. And one of the things that we learned - I guess the hard way - is that we do not necessarily have to look for planets just like the Earth. What I mean by this is that although in our solar system we have a very large variety of planets — you have Jupiter, which is very much bigger than the Earth, ten times in size, 300 times in mass; you have Saturn; you have Neptune and Uranus — all giant planets, all made of gas — then you have very small planets: that's the Earth, Venus, and Mars, and Mercury, going smaller — and then comets and asteroids.
There is a very significant gap in masses between 1 Earth mass and 14, where Uranus and Neptune are. That's actually, as we would say in physics, more than an order of magnitude. And it allows for a whole set of phenomena that could happen in that range that we've been missing. And from what we understand now, both from theory and more recently — meaning in the last two years — from observations of such systems, is that the fact that the solar system has no planet like this is just a fluke. It just happened the way the planets were formed that what ended up being the solar system has no planet which is in that mass range. The majority of planets in that mass range will be like the Earth, and for lack of a better term, we ended up calling them Super Earths.
I get a lot of flack for introducing that, but it comes from my bias as an astronomer. We call stars that are bigger than giants, super-giants; we call stellar explosions which are more energetic than novae, super-novae; so it just made sense that if you have a planet which is larger than the Earth but otherwise is in essence similar to the Earth, you would call it super Earth. I guess I didn't grow up with Super Man.
CHURCH: That's not Super-Earth, that's Krypton.
SASSELOV: Just take it as it is — it's just a term — it's just planets which are larger than the Earth. Now why is that interesting — if you really limit yourself to planets larger than Venus and Earth, but not much larger than Earth, then you're left with very small numbers in the galaxy as a whole and in our part of the galaxy as a whole. If you allow yourself to count super-Earths as part of the inventory that you can tap, then your numbers grow by two orders of magnitude. I'm saying this is because of two lines of evidence.
LLOYD: What is the concentration of the smaller ones? What fraction of solar systems, or stellar systems, has 'sub-Earth' planets?
SASSELOV: Ah, so that's actually a difficult question — what fraction of the planetary systems have planets smaller than the Earth — because they're hard to see. We have some estimates, which go to about the fraction of an Earth mass; well let's just say one Earth mass. We have no technical evidence now for less than that. That's from a technique that is called micro-lensing, by the way.
The evidence for this is in part statistical, but that's quite often the case. You observe many objects and you build statistical cases for all of that. On the one hand we already have detected a number of super-Earths — the current number is actually five. That's a small number for statistics, but it is not a small number statistics when you view it as an effort where a lot of other planets have been detected, and despite the difficulty of detecting smaller and smaller planets, you are detecting an increasing number of those in the planetary systems that you are observing. In other words, as you go to smaller and smaller masses, below about 12 to15 Earth masses to a planet, the numbers actually rise despite the statistical biases of actually having less of those. This anticipates that as our technology improves, which by the way it is, on a monthly basis, we will be discovering more of those.
There is another line of evidence which is a technique which is called micro-lensing for detection of planets, that is sensitive to the entire mass range of planets, all the way down to one Earth mass, and actually in fact a bit smaller than one Earth mass. This technique is scanning without any prejudice a large number of stars and to this point they have actually detected more super Earths — smaller planets — than larger planets. Which then tells you that if you take the current statistical numbers, which we have already figured out pretty well because we have larger planets in large numbers from the last 12 years of study, you can actually estimate what is the expected number of smaller planets just because of this comparison that you do.
There is a third line of evidence, which being a theorist myself I would not really push too hard, but theoretically if you form large planets you also form small planets, and there is no particular theoretical prejudice that anybody has come up with at this point, that you will somehow create gaps like the one we have in the solar system, where you will have only very small planets and only very big planets.
So the final question here is, are these super Earths actually any good for what we're interested in?
VENTER: Can you actually put a number — what's the number in the universe of super Earths?
SASSELOV: Well, that's a good question. Let's take our galaxy as an example, not the whole universe. We now have a pretty good idea that there are about 10^11 — a few times, 2 or 3 times 10^11 stars in the galaxy. So then we know that of those stars, only about 90 percent live long enough for the kind of complex chemistry that we have in mind, which is half a billion years or longer. However, only about 1/10 of these stars have enough heavy elements so the planets that will form around a star like that will either not form at all, or will have a significant deficiency. In fact we have evidence for that. Then the question is, how much do we know about the number of super Earths? Basically of those left over, where we have ten billion or so, you would say that it's only a fraction which is less than 50 percent but larger than 10 percent from those arguments that I gave to you so far. And then you look where in the planetary system you are — you don't want to be right next to the star and you don't want to be too far from the star, and this is following Morowitz's thermodynamic estimates for the temperature range. The bottom line that you end up with is about a hundred million planets that I would call habitable in the sense that they allow this kind of complex chemistry somewhere near their surface. A hundred million in our galaxy.
VENTER: And how many galaxies are there now?
SASSELOV: Oh, that's a large number, but it's a similar number to the number of stars — 10^11.
The question is — I actually insist on doing it for the galaxy, because I'm interested in the experiment; I'm a theorist, but I really trust the experiment — how many of those environments can we study soon enough (while I am still alive) and with enough detail that we actually can help you guys, the chemists and the molecular biologists, to constrain your experiments into those pathways to life. Basically the estimate is many. Because if you have that many, a hundred million in our galaxy, then only in our vicinity, with the experiments which are already underway, we'll have at least about fifty to a hundred in the next five years. And fifty to a hundred for which we can get some data that will be interesting to inform those questions.
VENTER: So your data set would exclude things like Europa?
SASSELOV: No, not at all — Europa is a great place to look for life. I'm just saying this is the minimum.
VENTER: But I mean size-wise.
SASSELOV: Well, the reason that Europa is viable is because of Jupiter. If Europa was just by itself we may not consider it that viable. In a sense I'm trying to be conservative here, and I can tell you that I can promise you only that many. But there is another reason why I actually would like to make this estimate, and why I talk about the hundred or so that we are going to be able to study. And this is because I do want to be able to study them outside of our solar system. And the question is, how do you study Europa in a planetary system that is 50 light years away? Very difficult.
But can you study a planet which is five times more massive than the Earth and two times larger than the Earth? Yes. Even much more easily than an Earth-size planet. So the point that I'm making is that the fact that super Earths are viable as planets in the comparison to the Earth is actually great for our ability to do these experiments, because it's much easier to detect and study a planet which is two times bigger than the Earth and is still viable. You can learn a lot from it.
One of the reasons I call these planets viable, and in fact even more viable than the Earth, is because they have the basic characteristics of the Earth, except in a much more robust way. You probably know that there is a big problem in planetary science, which is the comparison between the Earth and Venus. Why does the Earth have an atmosphere which
is not very hot, that's sort of understood — not yet, but sort of. Why does the Earth have plate tectonics, while Venus doesn't have plate tectonics, that's not understood — or we are at the verge of starting to understand that. These are questions that are much easier to answer for super Earths.
It turns out that plate tectonics, as understood from Earth, is a process which has been going on theoretically much more easily on a slightly bigger planet. In fact if you do the theory, as best as you can today, the Earth is at the margin of what is viable in terms of plate tectonics. Probably some of you may know that plate tectonics is a very important aspect of the viability of a planet in terms of surface conditions, because it's a good thermostat, it keeps the climate more or less stable over long periods of time, and also allows you to have easy access to the large reservoir of chemicals and gasses in the mantle of the planet.
In that sense super Earths are as good as the Earth, and I would argue — better. They have more stable and robust surface conditions. So there are more of them, they're as good as the Earth, if not better, and they are easier to study. So we have a very bright future of being able to at least find out what's going on.
VENTER: What role does gravity play in the larger — in the super Earths?
SASSELOV: It's actually a positive role. In the sense that if you take the general amount of out-gassing, fluxes, which interchange between the mantle and the atmosphere of the Earth, the Earth's gravity is very close to marginal — we know Mars is an example where it's definitely sub-marginal, in retaining a sufficient atmosphere, and hence making this thermostat being viable, and really providing you with stable conditions over at least a billion years. So having more gravity is actually better.
VENTER: It increases the odds of having an atmosphere?
SASSELOV: In keeping it. You always have an atmosphere — even Mercury has an atmosphere: there is some helium that is being punched out of the surface of the planet, but it simply cannot retain any of it. It just goes away.
So I’d prefer to answer questions rather than to continue.
SHAPIRO: Which is the closest known super Earth?
SASSELOV: The closest known is called — in fact there are two of them: Gliese 581c and d, and both of them are super Earths, and are just 20 light years away. Wilhelm Gliese was a German astronomer (1915-1993).
CHURCH: When will they arrive here?
SASSELOV: Next week.
CHURCH: Since they're better than us.
SASSELOV: The names are Gliese 581c and d — that's the number of the stars. c and d stands for 'planet c' and 'planet d'. There is also ‘planet b’, which is a bigger, Neptune-like planet. 30 years ago, Gliese made a catalog of all the nearby stars. A lot of them are very faint, they hence were only identified in this catalog, so it's a common practice to call the stars by the name of the author of the catalog with a consecutive number.
PRESS: Can you clarify the ratio that you're seeing from the microlensing studies of Earths to super-Earths? I didn't quite catch that number."
. . . . . (continued at the link above)
Dimitar Sasselov—LIFE: WHAT A CONCEPT! | Edge.org
DIMITAR SASSELOV: I will start the same way, by introducing my background. I am a physicist, just like Freeman and Seth, in background, but my expertise is astrophysics, and more particularly planetary astrophysics. So that means I'm here to try to tell you a little bit of what's new in the big picture, and also to warn you that my background basically means that I'm looking for general relationships — for generalities rather than specific answers to the questions that we are discussing here today.
So, for example, I am personally more interested in the question of the origins of life, rather than the origin of life. What I mean by that is I'm trying to understand what we could learn about pathways to life, or pathways to the complex chemistry that we recognize as life. As opposed to narrowly answering the question of what is the origin of life on this planet. And that's not to say there is more value in one or the other; it's just the approach that somebody with my background would naturally try to take. And also the approach, which — I would agree to some extent with what was said already — is in need of more research and has some promise.
One of the reasons why I think there are a lot of interesting new things coming from that perspective, that is from the cosmic perspective, or planetary perspective, is because we have a lot more evidence for what is out there in the universe than we did even a few years ago. So to some extent, what I want to tell you here is some of this new evidence and why is it so exciting, in being able to actually inform what we are discussing here.
Basically, in order to explain to you why this is interesting, I want to first of all convince you about three things, which are important to my approach. The first one is that what we are looking for is baryonic in nature. What I mean by that is something of which I don't need to convince you, I believe, but you should bear it in mind because this is a feature of our universe, the one we observe. Baryons are all the particles that make up atoms and all that is around us, including ourselves. But that's not necessarily the most common entity in the universe, as you — I'm sure — know about dark matter and dark energy. I think we have to agree that what we are looking for and would call life is baryonic in nature, and there is good reason to believe that dark matter and dark energy are not capable of that level of complexity in this universe yet — or at all.
The second point which I want to convince you of — or use as my background for what I'll tell you here — is that we should agree that what we are looking for, what we call life, is a complex chemical process. Basically, the ability of those atoms to combine in non-trivial ways. This is actually my point of departure, where I would be looking at life more from the purely thermodynamic aspect, that is from the point of view which Robert here described and H. Morowitz has been very eloquent in defining and actually done some research on. That is, what is the parameter space in which you can have chemistry which is complex enough to lead to a qualitatively new phenomenon, a phenomenon which we don't see in the rest of the universe. That's actually an important point here.
Do we know enough about the universe that we can have sufficiently good feeling about that parameter space? Obviously we don't have detailed knowledge of most of the observable universe, but the last 50 years have been actually a revolution in that field, in the sense of the ability to get diagnostics of very distant objects and a very large number of objects.
The databases in astronomy up until just a few years ago were larger than what biology had. It's only now that biology — and, I guess, telecommunications companies — have exceeded that. But one aspect of these databases is that you very rarely see unusual, unexplained phenomena. Despite what you all would like to write on the front page of your newspapers and magazines, actually there is a lot of very boring amount of data there, which is hundreds of thousands — already millions — of stars, which have exactly the same isotopic and chemical patterns that are predicted by the theory which is well developed and is called 'stellar evolution' (although it has very little to do with evolution as used in biology).
But it is one of those steps that we now understand as the development of our world that is of our universe, of starting with very simple baryonic structure for that matter, which then becomes more and more complex. Stellar evolution is one of those phenomena that did not exist in the first half billion years of the universe. And this is not a hypothesis; we know it. We actually can observe a lot of it, and we know that there were no stars during the epoch of recombination, which is the cosmic microwave background, with all the structure that we see in it. And then there were stars, and then stars started a new process, which did not exist in the universe before, which is the synthesis of the heavy elements. That is — baryons working together as elementary particles and building a structure — the Mendeleev table, which then would lead to chemistry.
VENTER: How many years ago was this?
SASSELOV: 13.7 billion years ago is where we see the precursor of the microwave background radiation, so that's our first very well studied piece of evidence. Then about half a billion later is the time when the first stars can form, from the gas, and they're mostly made of hydrogen and helium. Then they go through a period where over a time of five billion years they produce enough carbon, nitrogen and oxygen and all the heavy elements, where you start effectively producing planets. And then we come to 4.5 billion years, which is the origin of our own solar system and the Earth. And almost within a half billion years, some complex chemistry which we now see covering entirely and co-opting the geophysical cycles of this planet. So that's to give you a quick idea about the time scales.
In that sense life is an integral part of that global development that we see. And although we know only one example of it, it doesn't seem unusual when you think of it that way — as a progression of complexity that the baryonic aspect of this — baryonic matter — in this universe has actually the propensity to lead to. So the question then is what is this good for [in terms of] understanding the origins of life, or possible pathways? And even more generically, could we design experiments in which we can find out whether all these possible baryonic pathways really merge into one — the one that produces life here on Earth — or are there multiple pathways? Even if you could answer that question, that would be very exciting, because it will tell us something about the general rules of complexity that baryonic chemistry can really lead to.
The question then is, the third aspect which I want to convince you of, is we know quite a bit about the universe, but there are only a few places in the universe where you can think of that complex chemistry being capable to survive over a sufficiently long period of time. And vacuum is not one of them, in the sense of surviving in which you were talking about the origin of life; starting with smaller molecules, which then have enough time to lead to more complex ones. And when I think of vacuum, I don't mean the surface of a comet, but really the inter-stellar medium, with its very low density.
I can imagine life that started on some surface then migrating to live in the inter-stellar medium. But I cannot imagine, as an astrophysicist, from what I know, that there is an environment, which is stable enough over the time scales necessary for that chemistry to take place. So I am a little bit biased in that sense to planets and planetary systems as the only environment that we know of today, as far as we know in the universe, which has all of those factors put together — that is, stability over long periods of time, but sufficiently low or moderate temperatures. (Stars are very stable over billions of years, but they all have very high temperatures, all throughout.) And basically the overall thermodynamic window that Morowitz is talking about, which allows complex chemistry. That's actually much broader than simply having water.
When people talk about habitable environments, sometimes they would equate that to the existence of water, or the ability of water to be in a liquid form. That's a much broader view of what is available there. But whatever your idea of what could be habitable is, the bottom line is that there are not that many objects, or places, in the observable universe that allow that. In fact, planetary systems are certainly not only the best, but are probably the only ones on which we are certain that complex chemistry can occur.
Then the question is, how much do we know about planetary systems? Up until 12 years ago, essentially we knew only of one: the solar system. That situation is very similar to what we have with life. We only have one example. And that's bad from many points of view, and we — 'we' meaning astronomers — learned it the hard way, because it turned out that what we had theorized about planets was very solar system-centric, and we missed a lot of things that we should not have missed, but that always happens when you have only one example of something.
What planets allow you to do now that we know how many different types of them there are, is you can have a pretty good estimate of what to look for. And one of the things that we learned - I guess the hard way - is that we do not necessarily have to look for planets just like the Earth. What I mean by this is that although in our solar system we have a very large variety of planets — you have Jupiter, which is very much bigger than the Earth, ten times in size, 300 times in mass; you have Saturn; you have Neptune and Uranus — all giant planets, all made of gas — then you have very small planets: that's the Earth, Venus, and Mars, and Mercury, going smaller — and then comets and asteroids.
There is a very significant gap in masses between 1 Earth mass and 14, where Uranus and Neptune are. That's actually, as we would say in physics, more than an order of magnitude. And it allows for a whole set of phenomena that could happen in that range that we've been missing. And from what we understand now, both from theory and more recently — meaning in the last two years — from observations of such systems, is that the fact that the solar system has no planet like this is just a fluke. It just happened the way the planets were formed that what ended up being the solar system has no planet which is in that mass range. The majority of planets in that mass range will be like the Earth, and for lack of a better term, we ended up calling them Super Earths.
I get a lot of flack for introducing that, but it comes from my bias as an astronomer. We call stars that are bigger than giants, super-giants; we call stellar explosions which are more energetic than novae, super-novae; so it just made sense that if you have a planet which is larger than the Earth but otherwise is in essence similar to the Earth, you would call it super Earth. I guess I didn't grow up with Super Man.
CHURCH: That's not Super-Earth, that's Krypton.
SASSELOV: Just take it as it is — it's just a term — it's just planets which are larger than the Earth. Now why is that interesting — if you really limit yourself to planets larger than Venus and Earth, but not much larger than Earth, then you're left with very small numbers in the galaxy as a whole and in our part of the galaxy as a whole. If you allow yourself to count super-Earths as part of the inventory that you can tap, then your numbers grow by two orders of magnitude. I'm saying this is because of two lines of evidence.
LLOYD: What is the concentration of the smaller ones? What fraction of solar systems, or stellar systems, has 'sub-Earth' planets?
SASSELOV: Ah, so that's actually a difficult question — what fraction of the planetary systems have planets smaller than the Earth — because they're hard to see. We have some estimates, which go to about the fraction of an Earth mass; well let's just say one Earth mass. We have no technical evidence now for less than that. That's from a technique that is called micro-lensing, by the way.
The evidence for this is in part statistical, but that's quite often the case. You observe many objects and you build statistical cases for all of that. On the one hand we already have detected a number of super-Earths — the current number is actually five. That's a small number for statistics, but it is not a small number statistics when you view it as an effort where a lot of other planets have been detected, and despite the difficulty of detecting smaller and smaller planets, you are detecting an increasing number of those in the planetary systems that you are observing. In other words, as you go to smaller and smaller masses, below about 12 to15 Earth masses to a planet, the numbers actually rise despite the statistical biases of actually having less of those. This anticipates that as our technology improves, which by the way it is, on a monthly basis, we will be discovering more of those.
There is another line of evidence which is a technique which is called micro-lensing for detection of planets, that is sensitive to the entire mass range of planets, all the way down to one Earth mass, and actually in fact a bit smaller than one Earth mass. This technique is scanning without any prejudice a large number of stars and to this point they have actually detected more super Earths — smaller planets — than larger planets. Which then tells you that if you take the current statistical numbers, which we have already figured out pretty well because we have larger planets in large numbers from the last 12 years of study, you can actually estimate what is the expected number of smaller planets just because of this comparison that you do.
There is a third line of evidence, which being a theorist myself I would not really push too hard, but theoretically if you form large planets you also form small planets, and there is no particular theoretical prejudice that anybody has come up with at this point, that you will somehow create gaps like the one we have in the solar system, where you will have only very small planets and only very big planets.
So the final question here is, are these super Earths actually any good for what we're interested in?
VENTER: Can you actually put a number — what's the number in the universe of super Earths?
SASSELOV: Well, that's a good question. Let's take our galaxy as an example, not the whole universe. We now have a pretty good idea that there are about 10^11 — a few times, 2 or 3 times 10^11 stars in the galaxy. So then we know that of those stars, only about 90 percent live long enough for the kind of complex chemistry that we have in mind, which is half a billion years or longer. However, only about 1/10 of these stars have enough heavy elements so the planets that will form around a star like that will either not form at all, or will have a significant deficiency. In fact we have evidence for that. Then the question is, how much do we know about the number of super Earths? Basically of those left over, where we have ten billion or so, you would say that it's only a fraction which is less than 50 percent but larger than 10 percent from those arguments that I gave to you so far. And then you look where in the planetary system you are — you don't want to be right next to the star and you don't want to be too far from the star, and this is following Morowitz's thermodynamic estimates for the temperature range. The bottom line that you end up with is about a hundred million planets that I would call habitable in the sense that they allow this kind of complex chemistry somewhere near their surface. A hundred million in our galaxy.
VENTER: And how many galaxies are there now?
SASSELOV: Oh, that's a large number, but it's a similar number to the number of stars — 10^11.
The question is — I actually insist on doing it for the galaxy, because I'm interested in the experiment; I'm a theorist, but I really trust the experiment — how many of those environments can we study soon enough (while I am still alive) and with enough detail that we actually can help you guys, the chemists and the molecular biologists, to constrain your experiments into those pathways to life. Basically the estimate is many. Because if you have that many, a hundred million in our galaxy, then only in our vicinity, with the experiments which are already underway, we'll have at least about fifty to a hundred in the next five years. And fifty to a hundred for which we can get some data that will be interesting to inform those questions.
VENTER: So your data set would exclude things like Europa?
SASSELOV: No, not at all — Europa is a great place to look for life. I'm just saying this is the minimum.
VENTER: But I mean size-wise.
SASSELOV: Well, the reason that Europa is viable is because of Jupiter. If Europa was just by itself we may not consider it that viable. In a sense I'm trying to be conservative here, and I can tell you that I can promise you only that many. But there is another reason why I actually would like to make this estimate, and why I talk about the hundred or so that we are going to be able to study. And this is because I do want to be able to study them outside of our solar system. And the question is, how do you study Europa in a planetary system that is 50 light years away? Very difficult.
But can you study a planet which is five times more massive than the Earth and two times larger than the Earth? Yes. Even much more easily than an Earth-size planet. So the point that I'm making is that the fact that super Earths are viable as planets in the comparison to the Earth is actually great for our ability to do these experiments, because it's much easier to detect and study a planet which is two times bigger than the Earth and is still viable. You can learn a lot from it.
One of the reasons I call these planets viable, and in fact even more viable than the Earth, is because they have the basic characteristics of the Earth, except in a much more robust way. You probably know that there is a big problem in planetary science, which is the comparison between the Earth and Venus. Why does the Earth have an atmosphere which
is not very hot, that's sort of understood — not yet, but sort of. Why does the Earth have plate tectonics, while Venus doesn't have plate tectonics, that's not understood — or we are at the verge of starting to understand that. These are questions that are much easier to answer for super Earths.
It turns out that plate tectonics, as understood from Earth, is a process which has been going on theoretically much more easily on a slightly bigger planet. In fact if you do the theory, as best as you can today, the Earth is at the margin of what is viable in terms of plate tectonics. Probably some of you may know that plate tectonics is a very important aspect of the viability of a planet in terms of surface conditions, because it's a good thermostat, it keeps the climate more or less stable over long periods of time, and also allows you to have easy access to the large reservoir of chemicals and gasses in the mantle of the planet.
In that sense super Earths are as good as the Earth, and I would argue — better. They have more stable and robust surface conditions. So there are more of them, they're as good as the Earth, if not better, and they are easier to study. So we have a very bright future of being able to at least find out what's going on.
VENTER: What role does gravity play in the larger — in the super Earths?
SASSELOV: It's actually a positive role. In the sense that if you take the general amount of out-gassing, fluxes, which interchange between the mantle and the atmosphere of the Earth, the Earth's gravity is very close to marginal — we know Mars is an example where it's definitely sub-marginal, in retaining a sufficient atmosphere, and hence making this thermostat being viable, and really providing you with stable conditions over at least a billion years. So having more gravity is actually better.
VENTER: It increases the odds of having an atmosphere?
SASSELOV: In keeping it. You always have an atmosphere — even Mercury has an atmosphere: there is some helium that is being punched out of the surface of the planet, but it simply cannot retain any of it. It just goes away.
So I’d prefer to answer questions rather than to continue.
SHAPIRO: Which is the closest known super Earth?
SASSELOV: The closest known is called — in fact there are two of them: Gliese 581c and d, and both of them are super Earths, and are just 20 light years away. Wilhelm Gliese was a German astronomer (1915-1993).
CHURCH: When will they arrive here?
SASSELOV: Next week.
CHURCH: Since they're better than us.
SASSELOV: The names are Gliese 581c and d — that's the number of the stars. c and d stands for 'planet c' and 'planet d'. There is also ‘planet b’, which is a bigger, Neptune-like planet. 30 years ago, Gliese made a catalog of all the nearby stars. A lot of them are very faint, they hence were only identified in this catalog, so it's a common practice to call the stars by the name of the author of the catalog with a consecutive number.
PRESS: Can you clarify the ratio that you're seeing from the microlensing studies of Earths to super-Earths? I didn't quite catch that number."
. . . . . (continued at the link above)
Last edited:
Here is a link to an online transcript of the entire symposium (also published as a book):
https://www.edge.org/documents/life/Life.pdf
https://www.edge.org/documents/life/Life.pdf
Soupie
Paranormal Adept
Here's a blog post which seeks* to explain the neurobiology behind the powerful optical illusion posted above. (I have no idea if it's correct.)
The basic neurobiology behind the recently famous 12-dot illusion.
"While visual illusions are fascinating to look at, what I find most interesting about them is that they only exist in the first place because they are an artefact of the way our visual system is organised. Thus, behind every great visual illusion is an even greater neurobiological reason why we see it the way we do. So what is it that prevents us from seeing more than a few dots in the extinction illusion? To begin understanding the basics, let’s take a look at how information is transmitted from the eye to the brain. ..."
While the explanation is interesting, it's only indirectly related to the topic of this thread. That is, when I talk about the UFO stimulus being something that our perceptual systems cannot fully capture, I don't mean so in the sense of optical illusions like the one above. No, what I find to be the truly fascinating and relevant aspects of the perceptual system are how something "arises" in our conscious awareness/experience.
From the article:
"If this dot happens to be located elsewhere (below), then it will likely stimulate the receptive field of another cell that keeps a slightly different area of the visual world under surveillance. As the brain reads the signals arriving from this patch of the retina in these two cases, it has reason to believe in the existence of two small stimuli in different locations. Thus, it provides you with a conscious experience of these dots as distinct entities. ...
In the case of these two dots, the visual brain is receiving the same signal from the same retinal ganglion cell. This means that the information it has access to does not allow it to reasonably infer where something might be happening in a particular area of the visual world. Thus, as receptive fields of neurons in the retina grow larger, their signals give the brain less and less certainty as to what exactly is happening and where. When such certainty about visual events is lacking, there is no reason for them to arise in our conscious experience. Instead, the brain appears to provide us with an experiential ‘filler’ (you don’t exactly go around seeing ‘uncertainty’) and some level of ignorance regarding just how poor our spatial vision is in the eye’s periphery.
Thus, as you move your eyes across the extinction illusion, small black dots dip in and out of your conscious awareness as the periphery of your retina quickly becomes ‘blind’ to the existence of those dots that might have been visible to you when you were gazing directly at them."
That is some absolutely wild stuff. Quote: "[The brain] provides you with a conscious experience of these dots... [T]he brain appears to provide us with an experiential filler."
What the author is saying--and this is supported by a host of other neuroscientists--is that the reality we experience (such as when we are viewing the above optical illusion) is created for us on the fly by the brain. If you don't believe this, just view the optical illusion. What I can't get over is how seamless it is. Our brains are actively stitching together a seamless, rich perceptual field on the fly. And it's not just the visual field that this applies to; this is happening on all sensory levels: sound, smells, tastes, touch, etc.
The other thing that is so amazing about the "on the fly" nature of the creation/generation of the perceptual field is the complexity of the nervous system which is between stimulus X and perception X.
(1) So we have some external stimulus X interacting with the organism:
Followed by (2):
Concluding with (3) the experience of, say, a red apple.
Like the optical illusion, this all happens on the fly. We don't consciously experience the "information" flowing through our cornea, retina, rods, cones, and optic nerve. We don't consciously experience the electromagnetic waves rippling through the fabric of spacetime. We experience an apple which, much like the dots and not-dots above are "provided" to us by the brain.
We are tempted to believe that there is really a red, delicious apple out there. However, the physicists tell us (see Constance's article above) that all that's "really" out there is:
And the theoretical physicists will tell you that even point particles aren't "really" there.
The physical reality "provided" to us by our brains seems to be an adaptive, functional interface organisms possess to aid their survival. This provided interface is not, and need not be, an accurate depiction of objective reality. If objective reality truly consists of featureless point particles, then--since we obviously don't experience them--the entire perceptual field (i.e., physical reality) of textures, smells, sounds, tastes, colors, etc. is provided to us on the fly by our brains.
Of course this means that the appearance of the brain is provided via this same process. So far scientists and philosophers haven't been gotten close to reaching an empirical model of how the physical brain might produce conscious experience. There aren't even any theoretical models! Not even close.
The best we can say at this point is that whatever process is occurring in objective reality that corresponds to our human perception of a brain seems to be directly related to the contents of human conscious perception. I don't think we can even say that this process "causes" consciousness. We just don't know what consciousness is from an ontological standpoint. We certainly know consciousness in the sense that we--the conscious self--are consciousness.
So what does all this have to do with the UFO stimulus? The human perceptual system--whatever it may actually be outside of the perceived, human-specific, physical interface--seems to be a system which "provides" the organism with a virtual, perceptual landscape with which it can use to navigate objective reality. This system--a la the optical illusion above--is doing it's best to receive and process external stimuli and make sense of it all. The sense it makes is presented to us as a perceptual landscape. The instantaneous and seamless nature of this process--as evidenced by the illusion above--is amazing.
The thesis of this thread is that in some cases--for unclear reasons--the "sense" our perceptual system makes of certain stimuli results in fantastical, high strange UFO/paranormal experiences. the "filler" provided by the brain is dream-like in nature, whilst seamlessly fitting into the typical perceptual landscape it also stands apart as an extraordinary experience.
The basic neurobiology behind the recently famous 12-dot illusion.
"While visual illusions are fascinating to look at, what I find most interesting about them is that they only exist in the first place because they are an artefact of the way our visual system is organised. Thus, behind every great visual illusion is an even greater neurobiological reason why we see it the way we do. So what is it that prevents us from seeing more than a few dots in the extinction illusion? To begin understanding the basics, let’s take a look at how information is transmitted from the eye to the brain. ..."
While the explanation is interesting, it's only indirectly related to the topic of this thread. That is, when I talk about the UFO stimulus being something that our perceptual systems cannot fully capture, I don't mean so in the sense of optical illusions like the one above. No, what I find to be the truly fascinating and relevant aspects of the perceptual system are how something "arises" in our conscious awareness/experience.
From the article:
"If this dot happens to be located elsewhere (below), then it will likely stimulate the receptive field of another cell that keeps a slightly different area of the visual world under surveillance. As the brain reads the signals arriving from this patch of the retina in these two cases, it has reason to believe in the existence of two small stimuli in different locations. Thus, it provides you with a conscious experience of these dots as distinct entities. ...
In the case of these two dots, the visual brain is receiving the same signal from the same retinal ganglion cell. This means that the information it has access to does not allow it to reasonably infer where something might be happening in a particular area of the visual world. Thus, as receptive fields of neurons in the retina grow larger, their signals give the brain less and less certainty as to what exactly is happening and where. When such certainty about visual events is lacking, there is no reason for them to arise in our conscious experience. Instead, the brain appears to provide us with an experiential ‘filler’ (you don’t exactly go around seeing ‘uncertainty’) and some level of ignorance regarding just how poor our spatial vision is in the eye’s periphery.
Thus, as you move your eyes across the extinction illusion, small black dots dip in and out of your conscious awareness as the periphery of your retina quickly becomes ‘blind’ to the existence of those dots that might have been visible to you when you were gazing directly at them."
That is some absolutely wild stuff. Quote: "[The brain] provides you with a conscious experience of these dots... [T]he brain appears to provide us with an experiential filler."
What the author is saying--and this is supported by a host of other neuroscientists--is that the reality we experience (such as when we are viewing the above optical illusion) is created for us on the fly by the brain. If you don't believe this, just view the optical illusion. What I can't get over is how seamless it is. Our brains are actively stitching together a seamless, rich perceptual field on the fly. And it's not just the visual field that this applies to; this is happening on all sensory levels: sound, smells, tastes, touch, etc.
The other thing that is so amazing about the "on the fly" nature of the creation/generation of the perceptual field is the complexity of the nervous system which is between stimulus X and perception X.
(1) So we have some external stimulus X interacting with the organism:
Followed by (2):
Concluding with (3) the experience of, say, a red apple.
Like the optical illusion, this all happens on the fly. We don't consciously experience the "information" flowing through our cornea, retina, rods, cones, and optic nerve. We don't consciously experience the electromagnetic waves rippling through the fabric of spacetime. We experience an apple which, much like the dots and not-dots above are "provided" to us by the brain.
We are tempted to believe that there is really a red, delicious apple out there. However, the physicists tell us (see Constance's article above) that all that's "really" out there is:
And the theoretical physicists will tell you that even point particles aren't "really" there.
The physical reality "provided" to us by our brains seems to be an adaptive, functional interface organisms possess to aid their survival. This provided interface is not, and need not be, an accurate depiction of objective reality. If objective reality truly consists of featureless point particles, then--since we obviously don't experience them--the entire perceptual field (i.e., physical reality) of textures, smells, sounds, tastes, colors, etc. is provided to us on the fly by our brains.
Of course this means that the appearance of the brain is provided via this same process. So far scientists and philosophers haven't been gotten close to reaching an empirical model of how the physical brain might produce conscious experience. There aren't even any theoretical models! Not even close.
The best we can say at this point is that whatever process is occurring in objective reality that corresponds to our human perception of a brain seems to be directly related to the contents of human conscious perception. I don't think we can even say that this process "causes" consciousness. We just don't know what consciousness is from an ontological standpoint. We certainly know consciousness in the sense that we--the conscious self--are consciousness.
So what does all this have to do with the UFO stimulus? The human perceptual system--whatever it may actually be outside of the perceived, human-specific, physical interface--seems to be a system which "provides" the organism with a virtual, perceptual landscape with which it can use to navigate objective reality. This system--a la the optical illusion above--is doing it's best to receive and process external stimuli and make sense of it all. The sense it makes is presented to us as a perceptual landscape. The instantaneous and seamless nature of this process--as evidenced by the illusion above--is amazing.
The thesis of this thread is that in some cases--for unclear reasons--the "sense" our perceptual system makes of certain stimuli results in fantastical, high strange UFO/paranormal experiences. the "filler" provided by the brain is dream-like in nature, whilst seamlessly fitting into the typical perceptual landscape it also stands apart as an extraordinary experience.
@Soupie, while I try to make sense of your last post would you tell me which citation of mine you refer to here:
Thanks.
We are tempted to believe that there is really a red, delicious apple out there. However, the physicists tell us (see Constance's article above) that all that's "really" out there is:
And the theoretical physicists will tell you that even point particles aren't "really" there.
Thanks.
Soupie
Paranormal Adept
victimized
Skilled Investigator
Obviously you do not believe that you are simply human?
You use symbolic representation that has no purpose to the presence of your own self.
You know you are human, you have sexual procreation to reproduce your own presence. The information in which you exists states that it supports your life condition....but is not your life condition.
The sexual act continues life....if we stopped having sex, aged, then there is no life, or other information to consider your own existence.
If you use your mind correctly, the mind states...human life dies and then disintegrates and does not exist without the sexual act. There is no other reasoning to your own presence.
If you died, animals still live as an organic life form as their own animal nature, procreating their own species.
How does this situation relate to "filling in" and "thinking" as an actual organic body presence with an organic functioning condition?
Seemingly when we review how the scientific mind considers information it proposes that its own self only exists as other information.....how come?
Why is a scientist trying to impose conditions in which a life form does not exist....as if it is filled in?
This situation would state that obviously your own mind and cell state once had a greater self presence...organic cell life or DNA interaction, once owned a greater amount of the Earth's atmospheric body interaction to keep itself healthy, without mutations and without an increased aging condition, and you are now personally aware that you have lost some of your own "filled in" ownership of life.
This would be the reality of your own conclusions, for the Earth atmospheric body as a body demonstrates it is thinning due to the nuclear fuel condition of burning the coldness/presence of its liquid body in an artificial act.
@Soupie, I didn't read Sasselov to be saying that baryons constitute an ultimate 'objective reality', but rather that baryonic interactions in the quantum substrate gradually enabled the evolution of complex systems in chemistry leading further to the development of life, potentially through varying paths on different planets. I think the following two paragraphs express this view -- that the real nature of the physical universe has changed and developed over vast periods of time to produce new and increasingly complex phenomena, including species of evolving life and the natural environments that support their development. In our case and that of species like ourselves, natural affordances have enabled the development of intentions and coordinated actions, of societies and cultures, of philosophies, sciences, and arts. Our own human world, and no doubt others similar to ours, constitute new and immensely more complex lived realities than we can imagine for the quantum substrate itself:
"Basically, in order to explain to you why this is interesting, I want to first of all convince you about three things, which are important to my approach. The first one is that what we are looking for is baryonic in nature. What I mean by that is something of which I don't need to convince you, I believe, but you should bear it in mind because this is a feature of our universe, the one we observe. Baryons are all the particles that make up atoms and all that is around us, including ourselves. But that's not necessarily the most common entity in the universe, as you — I'm sure — know about dark matter and dark energy. I think we have to agree that what we are looking for and would call life is baryonic in nature, and there is good reason to believe that dark matter and dark energy are not capable of that level of complexity in this universe yet — or at all.
The second point which I want to convince you of — or use as my background for what I'll tell you here — is that we should agree that what we are looking for, what we call life, is a complex chemical process. Basically, the ability of those atoms to combine in non-trivial ways. This is actually my point of departure, where I would be looking at life more from the purely thermodynamic aspect, that is from the point of view which Robert here described and H. Morowitz has been very eloquent in defining and actually done some research on. That is, what is the parameter space in which you can have chemistry which is complex enough to lead to a qualitatively new phenomenon, a phenomenon which we don't see in the rest of the universe. That's actually an important point here.
"Basically, in order to explain to you why this is interesting, I want to first of all convince you about three things, which are important to my approach. The first one is that what we are looking for is baryonic in nature. What I mean by that is something of which I don't need to convince you, I believe, but you should bear it in mind because this is a feature of our universe, the one we observe. Baryons are all the particles that make up atoms and all that is around us, including ourselves. But that's not necessarily the most common entity in the universe, as you — I'm sure — know about dark matter and dark energy. I think we have to agree that what we are looking for and would call life is baryonic in nature, and there is good reason to believe that dark matter and dark energy are not capable of that level of complexity in this universe yet — or at all.
The second point which I want to convince you of — or use as my background for what I'll tell you here — is that we should agree that what we are looking for, what we call life, is a complex chemical process. Basically, the ability of those atoms to combine in non-trivial ways. This is actually my point of departure, where I would be looking at life more from the purely thermodynamic aspect, that is from the point of view which Robert here described and H. Morowitz has been very eloquent in defining and actually done some research on. That is, what is the parameter space in which you can have chemistry which is complex enough to lead to a qualitatively new phenomenon, a phenomenon which we don't see in the rest of the universe. That's actually an important point here.
Last edited:
I'm trying to understand the premises of what you write in the highlighted clause. It seems that at bottom you hold a presupposition that 'consciousness' is a thing or process or quantity (local to earth?, or generalized in the universe?) that is the intangible and inexplicable origin or source of individually experienced human and animal consciousnesses evolved on earth. So that cognitive abilities are not founded in preconscious and conscious experiences on the basis of which we begin to think, but instead somehow originate outside of individual consciousness in what? -- a mega-'brain' permeating the universe and informationally, computationally, producing every experience had by every living creature? Something like that notion seems to be expressed by Donald Hoffman whose speculations and 'interface hypothesis' have received a wide range of responses cited and quoted along with various writings by Hoffman in a discussion early in part 7 of the Consciousness and the Paranormal thread, but incipient in the last several pages of Part 6 of the thread. One critic of Hoffman's ideas wrote that Hoffman does not yet have a hypothesis but only "a framework for a hypothesis." My question is what are the premises and constituent parts/apparatus of that 'framework', and how much validity do they possess?